- This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St.

Petersburg, Sarasota.

[music] - Coming up, a handful of proposals to cut property taxes are gaining traction in the 2026 legislative session.

It started as more than a dozen plans.

We look at which ones seemed to have the best chance at getting lawmaker approval.

Our experts weigh in on the methodology of session and what bills fast track through the state House, from lowering the minimum age to buy a gun to expanding E-Verify.

West Tampa could that be the new home of the Tampa Bay Rays?

Hear what the board of trustees at Hillsborough College said to the team owners, and a group of employees have bought the publication they work for, turning the weekly newspaper into locally owned and operated.

What this means for Tampa Bay news-scape.

All that and more is next on Florida This Week.

[music] Welcome back to Florida This Week I'm Lissette Campos.

Joining our discussion today is Republican strategist Mark Proctor, Ray Roa editor-in-chief of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.

And Victor DiMiao, the president of the Hillsborough County Democratic Hispanic Caucus.

The second week of the 2026 legislative session is starting to look less about whether property taxes should be cut and more about how far lawmakers are willing to go.

Committees are thinning the field of property tax overhauls.

One leading plan would gradually phase out non-school property taxes for homestead owners by expanding the amount of your homestead exemption over the next decade, more sweeping ideas, including a total property tax elimination, do.

Remain alive but face sharper scrutiny.

Other ideas still in play include more narrow exemptions for senior citizens or tax relief that's tied to property insurance.

These would deliver less of a financial hit to local government budgets.

Many critics do maintain that the elimination of property taxes could result in cuts to local services.

Meanwhile, it is worth noting that a new statewide poll has found that 63% of Florida voters see property insurance relief as a higher priority than the issue of property taxes.

That poll, done by Mason and Dixon, it was commissioned by the Florida Policy Institute, which is a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization.

Victor, I'd like to start with you.

We started out with almost 13 proposals.

Now we're narrowing it down.

Where do you see all of this?

- Well, just to so the audience knows in Tallahassee, as someone who lobbies up there, there's only three people that matter the governor, the speaker of the House, and the Senate president.

That's it.

Now, I just saw an interview yesterday with the Senate president said, "We're not doing anything.

So there's no bill."

They're not going to discuss it.

There's no committee.

It's all being done in the House.

Who as we know, because the governor is a lame duck.

He's done in a year he's done or less than a year in November.

Um, so and he's and he's spills such bad blood over many, many years.

He pretty much did anything he wanted.

This year is different.

And you can you can sense it.

You can feel it.

And it started last year with the investigation of the governor.

So this.

- Of the Hope Florida Foundation.

- And this is and this is part and parcel of what the governor wants versus what the House wants.

And then the reality is this property taxes, whether you're in a city of Tampa or Hillsborough County and Pinellas County, they pay for the police department, the fire department, the parks, you name it.

Everything that runs the city are primarily paid through property taxes, so the total elimination of it is not going to happen.

- Well, when you when you look at the five that are now getting gaining more traction, um, the House Joint Resolution 201, that would eliminate it altogether.

They did write some additional verbiage that says that it would not impact the funding that goes to law enforcement officers.

Um, but House Resolution, House Joint Resolution 209 seems to be the one that's moving, moving farther along, and that's the one that gives folks an additional $200,000 in exemptions on homesteaded properties.

Right.

- And I spoke with, uh, Bob Enriquez, who's a friend of ours.

And, uh, you know, he discussing these bills with him for the show, and he was saying that that if they want to do some reform, yes, they should give, uh, you know, a higher exemption to homesteaders, because what's going to happen here is that if you own a home, it's great.

But if you have a home and a rental property, guess what?

The home may be not paying taxes, but that rental property is going to double.

And who does that hurt?

That hurts renters.

It hurts business owners.

So, you know, and there's also another bill in Tallahassee to raise the sales tax up to 9%, 8 or 9%.

So you know, you can't you you can't, you know, rob Peter to pay Paul if you if it doesn't balance and right.

And the overall thing is this that people have to understand right now they're only the budget.

Yes it's multi multi billion dollars but they're only they only have a little wiggle room of about $3 million.

And next year they're going to be in the hole a billion two.

And next year after that in two years we will be in the hole almost $6.5 billion a hole that's been blown up by crazy ideas like this and also vouchers for everybody.

- And but critics, again, would say that the money has been more than earned by the property values going up so much after Covid and so many new families moving in.

Mark, when you look at the different proposals, it seems like we've been talking about property taxes, doing something with that for over a year.

How do you see this playing out?

- A number of special sessions and we still haven't come to a resolve.

So homeowner affordability, that's a big issue as younger people can't afford homes.

I've been in the real estate business for a number of years, and the monthly payment has always been a factor.

The P.I.T.I the principal, the interest, the taxes and insurance.

And until they do something can't do anything about the principal interest rate is adjusted at a different level.

But you got to do something about the taxes and insurance.

However, the proposals that are being proposed, if they do pass the legislature are going to have to be on a ballot.

It's going to be voted on by the public in a referendum in November, which would require 80% of the voters to be in favor of the proposals.

I agree with Bob Enriquez says that probably the most wise one would be to raise the the homestead exemption.

You're talking about if you have $100,000 homestead exemption, but you have to carry a homeowner's insurance because a lot of people because the insurance issues, a lot of people are going self-insured, which is, you know, they have an expensive home and the deductibles and stuff, they might as well go self-insured.

So anyway, long story short, uh, I think it's going to be we're going to continue to talk about it and talk about it, talk about it.

But one, one, one thing I would say taxes do go for issues that we have, our infrastructure, our daily needs.

Insurance is only making the insurance companies richer.

So that's something I think we should deal with.

- And let's remember that, you know, the property tax is one of the few taxes that taxes rich people.

You know more than it does people who don't have wealth.

If your property is worth a lot.

So as we're talking about solutions to find this a sales tax, tolls, fees, utilities, whatever, we have to remember that, you know, the budgets of these lower class, uh, middle class households, they're going to have to give up much more of a percentage of that budget to make things work for them.

- And a city can cities and counties already said, if you pass this, we're going to nickel and dime you to death.

So everything you pay for now, whether it's water, sewer, garbage.

- Ripple effects, that you.

- All are anticipating.

- There's two things you can't do anything about.

They say death and taxes, right?

So what are you going to do?

Let me just make one note.

I won't get any agreement on this side.

But Donald Trump has now said that we can't have institutional real estate purchases, which I think would help.

I think that would help.

These institutions are coming in and buying pieces of property and raising the prices and everything else.

- So but before we move on to our next topic, I want to make sure that the viewers are not confused that the property taxes eliminated or cut only applies to homesteaded properties, vacation homes, commercial homes, second homes.

Those would still be taxed.

- And let's not talk about the fact that really, the legislators kicking the can down the road in a way and saying this phase out plan, I mean, it kind of makes it look like you're working, but you're not having those those real arguments that that the voters want you to do.

They want you to talk to the insurance companies and get them relief for that.

- And the real issue you mentioned at the head of the show, which is insurance people, really we got to pay car insurance, health insurance, life, you know, health insurance is going through the roof, too.

So all the insurance company as a whole, they're making record profits right now.

But you said that people their insurances.

- Expected more after hurricane season.

- They've had.

- Five.

- Sessions on insurance and they've done nothing but give the insurance companies everything, everything they wanted.

So gentlemen, we've talked about that.

- Yes we have.

We're going to move on to our next topic.

Um, and that is the Florida State House moved fast this season to revive most bills that stalled or even died last year, sending them straight to the Senate for another look.

House leaders say that this strategy is about efficiency, fast tracking proposals already debated, rather than starting them from scratch.

Now, among the bills is a measure shielding phosphate landowners from lawsuits.

There's a renewed push to lower Florida's gun buying age back to 18 years old.

It had been raised to 21 following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida in 2018.

In that shooting, 17 people died.

The House also advancing the bill to expand E-Verify requirements so that it's not just limited to businesses with 25 or more employees.

The question now is whether the Senate will reconsider ideas it previously rejected, and what this streamlined approach will mean for the rest of the session.

Mark, I'd like to ask you, for the person who is not familiar with the inner workings of the session, it seems, uh, it doesn't make the common sense, is not there to send people the exact same verbiage that was voted down the last time.

But it is this, in fact, a strategy.

- It's sausage making.

[laughter] Yeah.

It's interesting.

It's kind of like they go up there, uh, to play around, the lobbyists get involved, and then they come back and say, oh, we can't do that.

And then they change it and things like that.

Now let me mention a positive one.

This is one that got bipartisan support.

And that's the AI Bill of Rights.

It went it passed the Senate Committee ten to nothing.

And it's.

- A regulation.

- That's right.

That's gotten bipartisan.

So there are some bills that may move forward that that everybody would agree on.

- But the problem that's going to set up a battle with, with the federal government and Donald Trump, who doesn't want any regulation on these things.

- So only at the federal level.

- He's saying, I mean, the feds kind of supersede the the states in many ways because of the Federalist Clauses and so forth.

But yeah, it's a great thing to talk about.

I think there should be regulation on AI because we, you know, we're creating a monster here.

And guys I've seen on TV like Bill Gates and them say, you know, there should be some kind of oversight on this.

So, uh, but one thing to piggyback what Mark says, one thing that Tallahassee is really good at is wasting time.

They waste more time and money.

- You both are agreeing.

- Yeah, they because it's called it's called avoidance reaction.

If we can avoid a controversial issue and talk about, you know, let's, let's, uh, you know, recognize Flag Day or something, they'll, they'll spend an hour and a half debating that and passing it.

So they're very good about doing that.

But as far as conducting business, and this is the early part of the session where they really waste a lot of time and all it all piles up at the end like the last week or day.

March 13th.

- Is the big day.

- They have yet to pass the Flamingo state Bird Bill.

- You see.

Yeah.

- And that's a big debate too, Ray.

- There's there's so many passions about so many different kinds of bills that are moving forward when when you all are talking to people on the street asking them, what's the consensus?

- I mean, like, this phosphate bill is interesting, right?

And I will say another thing that we lose when they don't talk about these bills is they don't get to go on the record again with their arguments for and against these bills.

So we don't get to hear if their positions have evolved, the things that they've learned and things like that.

So we all lose when that happens.

And I'm sure the reporters are chomping at the bit to write stories like that.

But this phosphate bill is really interesting, right?

We talk about the landowners, and you don't want anybody stuck with with this stuff, but we're talking about landowners.

Let's talk about the land, how the land got polluted in the first place.

You know, we have companies like Mosaic that just own so much land.

And a lot of that acreage ends up polluted.

Right.

And if we can agree that toxic matter should be removed from land in Florida, then we can move forward and say, yes, that's expensive.

But this bill, it doesn't do anything about the land or the pollution.

This bill just basically absolves people and companies of the responsibility of cleaning it up.

So I don't know.

I mean, if you love the environment in Florida, I don't know that you're really happy about this one.

- So yeah.

So we're going to move on to another topic that has folks really opinionated and focused on and passionate about, and that is our Tampa Bay Rays.

The Tampa Bay Rays took a big step toward leaving their current baseball home.

The plan centers in an area of Tampa already familiar to sports fans.

Take a look.

- Get your season opening day programs.

- The year was 1998.

St.

Pete's Tropicana Field was then the Florida Suncoast Dome, and the team taking the mound was named the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Fast forward to 2026 and a lot has changed since that first pitch.

The trop has undergone multiple renovations, including a new roof blown off by Hurricane Milton in 2024.

And the team we now know as the Tampa Bay rays looks as though it will move across the bay to Tampa.

The Hillsborough College Board of Trustees on Tuesday unanimously approved a non-binding memorandum of understanding with the Rays.

Together, they will pursue a redevelopment partnership of the college's 113 acre Dale Mabry Campus.

- We will work alongside the partners at at the county, and those commissioners will work alongside the city, will work alongside the Sports Authority and all other bodies towards making this a success.

- The land is located near Tampa International Airport, just steps away from Raymond James Stadium, George Steinbrenner Field, and the Yankees spring training facility.

The memorandum outlines three key parts of the project a new Major League Baseball stadium, a mixed use land development, and new facilities for Hillsborough College.

The property itself would remain in the hands of Hillsborough College, and would be leased to the Rays for no less than 99 years.

- We are already in need of over $50 million of renovation on the Dale Mabry campus now.

Think about the workforce development effort, the partnership 12,000 new jobs.

- The memorandum does not provide funding details, including whether taxpayers will be asked to foot some of the bill.

The two sides have 180 days to exclusively negotiate and vote on a final agreement.

The rays are set to return to St.

Pete's Tropicana Field on April the 6th, and expected to play there for three more seasons.

And Ray, your reporters at Creative Loafing have been covering the race for years.

Is this good news, or is this more news that will not result in change?

- It depends.

If you like the movie Groundhog Day, right?

You know the timing.

I think with Hillsborough Community College, dropping community from its name is something.

But I'm just thinking about the headlines that we're going to get right.

You mentioned our columnist Thomas Hallock in '23.

He really drew this line between newspaper headlines, TV spots that really endorse these bad deals, right.

Why?

We love watching sports.

It's good content, right?

But the Columbia Journalism Review has drawn this direct correlation between reporters kind of giving way too much credence to these economic impact studies that say what the subsidies will do and then the subsidies passing.

So I'm worried about that.

But we got a letter from a reader who's a professor there, and he wanted to focus on the students.

Right.

If this thing takes 5 to 6 years, that's three full cohorts of students.

Where are they going to class?

Are they in trailers?

These developments?

I know Vic has this M.O.U.

here, but we need details.

Like your spot said.

Do we know that these jobs are going to be permanent, full time, long lasting?

Are they going to be able to afford to live there, to eat there, to, to to do that?

So if we can put the focus back on the students, and I know that that the rays ownership has said that they do.

But we need details on that.

What are the traffic and environmental impacts, you know, and really put the students at the center of this.

Then maybe Dr.

Atwater will look like a guy who really pulled out a win here.

Because if they really want this stadium, they can really give us some stuff.

- So, Victor, you were at the meeting.

- Your thoughts when you asked me to be on the show?

I went, and this is the M.O.U.

I mean, it's very thin.

It's got a lot of platitudes in there, but there is no detail.

So I went to see, you know, to see what happened.

And it was a five minute discussion.

Nobody asked a question.

They just boom, rubber stamped it and it was done.

So now and then, of course, I went to the press conference afterwards, which most of the questions were going to the ownership of the of the baseball team because they're the ones driving the train.

Uh, and um, uh, you know, they have six months to turn this into a very thick, uh, product.

And we'll we'll see what it says.

My concern is this, um, I did when the Buccaneers came around, we remember we passed the city tax.

- The community investment tax.

- Having been chair of the Industrial Development Board.

I know you can borrow the money for this, but what Chase, JP Morgan Chase, who's going to pay the nut every month?

Just like buying a house so that the city tax passed the.

And we just really, really re-upped it.

We have it for 15 years.

That's right.

And I heard that when I was fighting this thing at the city hall for this pipe that's going down, Howard, and that's going to cost $100 million for that.

And the budget, she says, well, you know, we got the city tax.

There's going to be $800 million from the county.

But that 800 million, that city tax that we have in Hillsborough County, part of that's going to go to the bucks.

- It's already accounted for.

- Correct.

Some goes to the city of Tampa, some goes to the city of Plant City, some goes to Tampa, some goes to the county.

And then you've got the rays, the Bucs, the lightning.

That pie is like shrunk now.

So what part of the pie is going to be left to pay for this.

And the session is up there going on right now as we talked about there's no bill saying.

There's a rumor that the governor promised 150 million.

I don't see it anywhere in the budget, um.

- That people say a lot of things.

- And the other problem is.

- Because they're looking for relevance, right?

You said you said.

- Something that's very important, and that is this is this is just feet away from the east west runway, which was the original runway for the airport.

You know, the FAA is real strict about height restrictions.

Uh, the height of Raymond James is only about 200ft.

This thing is going to be another 100ft high.

So if you take all the school campus and jam all those buildings to the lowest and Columbus Drive.

Guess what?

Now you're going to have 16 story buildings where all the campus is going to be like the medical school downtown.

And the Tropicana Field is noted for its weird roof.

Yes.

The only one in the NFL.

If you hit a ring, you either hit a strike or you hit a home run, depending on which ring you hit.

So it was built.

We ran out of money when they built it.

That's why the roof is slanted.

So, um.

- So I want to make sure I get Mark in here.

- Mark, there's a lot of issues.

- What do you say about this building?

- I could argue either side of this until we know what the financing is.

We don't know.

But the one thing I'd say, although be great to have a sports complex, I would dread driving down Dale Mabry because you're going to have so much traffic.

Uh, football's maybe on a Sunday for a part of the year.

Spring training is part of the year.

Baseball is almost all year round and the traffic is going to be atrocious.

- And the kids, let's not forget that, that promises were made to the mayor of St.

Pete, Mayor Ken Welch, where there were plans and economic impact studies done about rebuilding Tropicana Field and also bringing back the gas plant district.

Um, and what it just kind of disappeared.

So how do we what do we look for to make sure that that doesn't happen with this plan?

What would be the signs?

- That's an excellent.

- Question.

You know, look, the parking is going to be a nightmare.

Like like Mark says.

And then the Bucs have just announced they want to spend 2.5 billion to do the same exact thing right across the street.

So they've had the right to do hotel shops, restaurants, all that stuff around the the stadium, and they've never done it, but now they are.

So now across the street where the rays are going to be, they're going to have hotel shops, restaurants, and then you're going to have all these kids crammed in these high buildings.

Where is everyone going to park?

I mean, this is this is going to be a big issue.

I talked to the Tax Collector yesterday.

She's got a big piece of property.

She didn't know anything about where the people are going to park for her office.

So there's a lot of moving parts here.

The bottom line is how.

And then like I said, the other thing is, uh, two other parts is really important.

Number one, the guy that owns the the owner of the Rays, Mr.

Zaleski, uh, his stock and his company, Dream Finders Home.

- The home builder.

- Dropped by 50% in the last six months, uh, from, you know, 30 some dollars a share to 15 bucks a share.

So his, uh, his wealth has shrunk.

So his input in paying for this is going to be less.

And the other part of this is the city tax.

Like I said, what piece of the pie are they going to get there.

So these are these are things that are really serious questions that people have got to work out.

- So this particular week has been so difficult because there's so much news happening.

And so to narrow it down.

So we've talked about what the bills and things that are going on in the legislative session.

What are some of the other big stories that each of you are looking at?

Mark, I'd like to start with you.

What else are you looking at?

- Well, I'm looking at something that I'm involved in historical, uh, reference to.

Uh, I'm chairman of the Timberly Trust, which is the, uh, manages the 1886 Moseley homestead.

And earlier this year, last year, uh, a Lifetime movie network filmed a portion of a film that is, uh, Friday.

Uh, this 23rd, uh, is being released on Lifetime.

On Lifetime.

- Wonderful.

Victor, what's your other big story?

- Well, as, uh, president of the Hispanic Caucus, we had an interesting and being half Cuban myself, we had interest joined by New York Times yesterday that was on the front page because of Trump's success in Venezuela.

The eyes.

All eyes are turning to Cuba now.

Will they go in?

Will somehow they're trying to cut a deal to turn the government over in Cuba.

And I can tell you, having been there many, many times, it's not going to be easy.

This Cuba is not Venezuela.

It's going to be a bloodbath.

And even what the Wall Street Journal today had a front page story talking about.

This is the goal of the administration is to go into Cuba and turn over the government.

So the New York Times article was interesting because half of the story was about here in Tampa and the Cuban population here, which is much older than Miami and South Florida, and how they feel about it.

The front, the top of the story is, yeah, this is a great idea.

The bottom part is not going to be easy to do that.

I can assure you.

It's not going to be easy to do that.

- Well, there's another big story we definitely want to cover with our guest, Ray Roa.

Take a look, Creative Loafing.

A staple of Tampa Bay's local media landscape is back under local control for the first time in 18 years.

It was sold to a group of staff and local investors.

Ray, first of all, congratulations.

I have a copy here for you to autograph for us.

- Um.

- You know, this has been a long road getting here.

Tell us about it.

- Yeah, I think we've been talking about it seriously for a year, and the idea has always been there.

I think the pandemic changed a lot of us.

When we cut that staff all the way down, we learned how to work really lean.

And you grow really close to the people that that you work with.

And you think you love something, and then you see it really on the ropes, and you realize how much you really love something and love a community.

And you see the way that happened.

And I think ever since then, us for James Howard, my publisher, has been there 31 years.

Uh, Anthony Carbone, he's a senior sales guy, 26 years I've been there 15 years.

Um, Colin Wolfe 6 or 7 years.

And we just got really lucky to find an investor who believes in our mission, and another partner who believes in helping us grow our newsroom through our new nonprofit initiative.

So we're just so stoked and excited about the work.

And I'll sign off on every typo that's in.

- There for sure.

- It is.

It's exciting news for anyone studying journalism in the local community.

The internships and just the job possibilities are endless with this.

Congratulations!

Thank you so much.

And that's all the time that we have for today.

Thank you so much to our panel members helping us better understand the big issues impacting Floridians.

Our thanks to Mark Proctor, Victor DiMiao and Ray Roa from all of us here at WEDU.

Thank you so much for watching.

We'll see you next week.

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